Title: Block old browser versions and suspicious browsers
Author: hupe13
Published: <strong>December 8, 2025</strong>
Last modified: April 17, 2026

---

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![](https://ps.w.org/wimb-and-block/assets/icon.svg?rev=3413710)

# Block old browser versions and suspicious browsers

 By [hupe13](https://profiles.wordpress.org/hupe13/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wimb-and-block.2.3.zip)

 * [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wimb-and-block/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wimb-and-block/#reviews)
 *  [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wimb-and-block/#installation)
 * [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wimb-and-block/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wimb-and-block/)

## Description

There are many ways to block unwanted access to your website. This plugin checks
which user agent is accessing your website. If it is outdated, unwanted, or suspicious,
access is blocked.

Every time your web browser makes a request to a website, it sends a HTTP Header
called the “User Agent”. The User Agent string contains information about your web
browser name, operating system, device type and lots of other useful bits of information.

The plugin sends with an API the User Agent string of every browser that accesses
your website for the first time to [https://api.whatismybrowser.com/api/v2/user_agent_parse](https://api.whatismybrowser.com/api/v2/user_agent_parse)
to obtain following information about the User Agent:

 * Software Name & Version
 * Operating System Name & Version

With this information, the plugin attempts to detect old and bad browsers and denies
them access to your website.

#### HowTo

 * Go to [What is my browser?](https://developers.whatismybrowser.com/api/pricing/)
   and sign up to the WhatIsMyBrowser.com API for a Basic (free) Application Plan.
 * Take care about the [WhatIsMyBrowser.com API Terms and Conditions](https://developers.whatismybrowser.com/api/about/legal/).
 * You have a limit of 5000 hits / month for Parsing User Agent. That’s why the 
   plugin manages a database table.
 * The user agent string of every browser that accesses your website for the first
   time is sent to this service, and the information is stored this table.

#### Functions

 * The plugin checks whether the browser is up to date; it does not check whether
   the requested page or post actually exists.
 * Browsers are blocked if the browser and/or system are outdated:
    - Default: Chrome, Edge and Chrome based browsers < 139, Firefox browsers < 
      140, Safari < 18, Samsung Browser < 28, Internet Explorer, Netscape (!)
    - Old systems are all Windows versions prior to Windows 10, MacOS prior to Catalina
      and Android versions < 10 and Symbian.
 * It will be blocked also if “Software” contains “unknown” or is empty.
 * You can also set up other browsers.
 * Sometimes there are false positive, for example, if the browser is from Mastodon.
   In this case, you can exclude it from the check.
 * The plugin checks whether the crawlers really originate from Google, Bing, Yandex,
   Apple, Mojeek, Baidu, Seznam and others.
 * The plugin blocks browsers like Chrome, Firefox and other without [Sec-Fetch headers](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Fetch_metadata_request_header)(
   Sec-Fetch-Site, Sec-Fetch-Mode, Sec-Fetch-Dest) and incorrect [Client hints](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Guides/Client_hints)(
   Sec-CH-UA, Sec-CH-UA-Platform).

#### About robots.txt

 * You can configure some rewrite rules to provide a robots.txt file that can allow
   or deny crawling for a browser. If crawling is denied, access to your website
   will be blocked for that browser.

#### Logging

 * The logging can be very detailed. Please check the logs and the WIMB table regularly.

## Screenshots

 * [[
 * Database settings
 * [[
 * Exclude these browsers from checking / Always block browsers with this strings
 * [[
 * robots.txt settings
 * [[
 * Access attempts from outdated browsers are blocked

## Installation

 * Install the plugin in the usual way.
 * Go to Settings – WIMB and Block – and get documentation and settings options.

## Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

## Contributors & Developers

“Block old browser versions and suspicious browsers” is open source software. The
following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ hupe13 ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/hupe13/)

“Block old browser versions and suspicious browsers” has been translated into 1 
locale. Thank you to [the translators](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/wimb-and-block/contributors)
for their contributions.

[Translate “Block old browser versions and suspicious browsers” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/wimb-and-block)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/wimb-and-block/), check
out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/wimb-and-block/), or 
subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/wimb-and-block/)
by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/wimb-and-block/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

= 260417 / 2.3

 * fixed an error when delete settings

see [Changelog](https://github.com/hupe13/wimb-and-block/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md)

## Meta

 *  Version **2.3**
 *  Last updated **2 days ago**
 *  Active installations **Fewer than 10**
 *  WordPress version ** 6.2 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **7.0**
 *  PHP version ** 8.1 or higher **
 *  Languages
 * [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wimb-and-block/) and [German](https://de.wordpress.org/plugins/wimb-and-block/).
 *  [Translate into your language](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/wimb-and-block)
 * Tags
 * [bad bots](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/bad-bots/)[ban](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/ban/)
   [blocking](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/blocking/)[robots.txt](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/robots-txt/)
   [security](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/security/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wimb-and-block/advanced/)

## Ratings

No reviews have been submitted yet.

[Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wimb-and-block/reviews/#new-post)

[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wimb-and-block/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ hupe13 ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/hupe13/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wimb-and-block/)